Trade Ally Q&A: Jason Bethers, Elite Electric

Jason Bethers, co-owner of Elite Electric, is an active Network trade ally. In this interview, he talks about how maintenance calls and incentives can lead to higher sales.

Q: Tell us about your company.

My brother Chad and I founded Elite Electric in 2006, and we’ve been growing steadily ever since. We are based out of Bend, OR and primarily focus on design build projects. We take pride in providing real time information to our customers to help them understand project costs during the design process.

Q: How effective do you believe maintenance calls have been in helping your company sell energy efficient products?

Maintenance calls have provided us with a lot of opportunities to go into existing buildings and improve their lighting with energy efficient equipment. The service department has been key in generating new retrofit installations.

Our service department mainly works in the commercial field, and we get a lot of calls about failed lighting. Most of the time these businesses have had the same lights for the last twenty years, so they don’t know about what kinds of improvements are available. Maintenance calls are a great opportunity to sell new energy efficient equipment.

Q: How have utility incentive programs helped your company’s sales process?

When LEDs were being rolled out utility incentives were an enormous help, and they continue to be very helpful in the sales process. Offering an incentive to help the customer reduce operating and maintenance costs make it an easy sell. Ensuring that our employees understand available utility incentives has been a large help in boosting our sales and has helped us grow as a company.

Q: What common barriers do you encounter when it comes to selling energy-efficient equipment?

Luckily turning people onto LEDs is a no-brainer these days, but we still encounter barriers with implementing controls in projects. For example, a lot of folks aren’t necessarily pleased with daylight harvesting, where people see their lighting dim because ambient lighting is increasing.

Discussing project costs and functions helps us mitigate customer concerns and ensure that they have the best performing, most efficient system possible. It also helps customer satisfaction and can lead to additional projects in the future.